Yearly Archives: 2013

The Orphan Works Directive 2012/28/EU was published in the Official Journal of the European Union on 27 October 2012. This post provides an overview of the main provisions set forth by the Directive and describes the approach used by the European institutions in a first tentative step towards tackling the ...

After the failures of Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA), the Obama administration’s Internet Policy Task Force has recently put forward a new proposal to making it a felony to stream copyrighted works, along with a Green Paper and call for comments on the future of ...

The advent of mass digitization via Google Books has ignited a series of copyright-related actions filed by book publishers and authors. There are two issues: whether Google and the owners of affiliated digital libraries are entitled to a fair use defense for library use, including providing access to print-disabled individuals, ...

Patent trolls have been in the spotlight of national attention in the past year, as President Obama addressed the problem in his Fireside Hangout and a White House report attempted to quantify the impact of abusive litigation. Officially known as Patent Assertion Entities, or PAEs, these companies purchase patents and bring patent infringement claims as a ...

If the Internet international archives will register 2013 as the year of Edward Snowden and the disclosure of National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance programs by the media, 2012 was all about the mobilization against a United Nations (U.N.) attempt to take over the Internet. This post recaps the legal and ...

The Copyright Alert System (CAS) was rolled out in late February 2013. CAS constitutes the United States realization of the international concept of “graduated response programs:” frameworks for media owners to address alleged online copyright infringements with computer users through their Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Key features of CAS – ...

With spring in the air, it is time to take another look at current news in the world of patent troll litigation. By now full-fledged media darlings, patent infringement lawsuits filed by non-practicing entities are everywhere you turn, garnering not just upvotes on Hackernews, retweets on Twitter, but time in the halls ...

Bitcoin, an anonymous currency imagined by a mysterious individual with a secret identity, is on everybody’s mind. The cryptographic digital currency, operating through a decentralized peer-to-peer network, is both an opportunity for criminals and entrepreneurial early adopters as well as a challenge for regulators. Since inception, bitcoin has captured headlines, ...

A recent conference at Stanford Law brought together top-flight litigators, intellectual property scholars, representatives from USPTO and WIPO, and in-house counsel for a rousing discussion of emerging issues in design patents. In contrast to an ordinary utility patent, a design patent is granted to an inventor of a new, original and ...

The embittered battle between Dish Network and American Broadcasting Companies has given a public face to the struggle between the entertainment and technology industries over the role of copyright in media. In this battle, however, theoretical copyright interests are secondary to networks’ central business concern: profit. The future of advertising ...